


Motherhood

by bearonthecouch



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood & Manga
Genre: Gen, Moms Made Fullmetal Week 2020, Terminal Illness (Chapter 4)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:42:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 7,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24369793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bearonthecouch/pseuds/bearonthecouch
Summary: Maes smiled tentatively, and then he flung his arms around her. “You're the best, Mom!”
Relationships: Alex Louis Armstrong & His Mother, Alphonse Elric & Edward Elric & Pinako Rockbell, Chris "Madam Christmas" Mustang & Roy Mustang, Edward Elric & Trisha Elric, Elicia Hughes & Gracia Hughes & Maes Hughes, Maes Hughes & His Mother, Pinako Rockbell & Winry Rockbell, Riza Hawkeye & Riza Hawkeye's Mother
Kudos: 26





	1. Day 1: Baby Talk (Gracia Hughes)

“Ba-da-da,” Elicia gurgled, tapping her rattle against the coffee table in an irregular rhythm.

“She said it!” Maes cried, giddy with excitement. “She said 'da-da'!”

“She's just babbling, Maes,” Gracia sighed. She poured two cups of coffee and handed one to him, but he shook his head and nodded pointedly at their daughter. Ah. Right. No hot beverages within grabbing distance of the infant. Maes was overprotective. Gracia had often settled her mug on the coffee table while watching Elicia toddle around the living room, and nothing had happened yet. But she could indulge her husband. After all, he was so rarely home at this time of day.

She set both of their mugs on the kitchen counter and went over to join them.

“Da-da-da-da-da,” Elicia sang.

Maes gave Gracia a pointed look. “I _told_ you.”

Gracia rolled her eyes, and picked Elicia up. “Your dada is being silly, isn't he?” she teased the little girl as she set her in her lap. Elicia grinned up at her.

Maes picked himself up from where he'd been crawling around on the floor chasing Elicia. He pushed a few toys out of the way with his foot, and then settled onto the couch next to his wife and daughter.

“It's Mother's Day,” he said softly, as he lay his head on Gracia's shoulder.

“I hadn't noticed,” she lied.

“Elicia and I want to do something special for you.” Gracia smiled. At eight months old, she was sure Elicia had no idea what Mother's Day was. But the thought was sweet.

“Something special like what?” she asked Maes.

He cleared his throat, sat up and reached for their daughter. Gracia allowed him to pick her up and smiled fondly as he bounced her on his knee. Elicia's peals of laughter were music to both her parents' ears.

“Flowers,” Maes said, after he'd settled Elicia down. “Ice cream. Picnic in the park.”

“That does sound lovely.”

“It does, doesn't it?”

One glance out the window was all it took to see the flaw in that perfect plan: it was raining cats and dogs, the kind of stormy weather that promised not to let up for possibly days. Rain was far from unusual in Central, but it almost always set Maes to pouting. He wasn't made for sitting still in their small home, no matter how much he loved his wife and daughter.

Elicia stuck the knuckles of her fist into her mouth and stared up at Maes, looking for all the world like she was engaging him in conversation. Maes broke into a grin, and tapped her little nose with his finger. “Good idea,” he teased, planting kisses all over her belly until she was squealing with laughter.

“Our eight-month-old daughter had a good idea?” Gracia asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Oh, yes. She says we should go out anyway.”

Maes whistled as he walked around the house, collecting the diaper bag and the picnic foods and Elicia's tiny little rain jacket, with the baby ducks printed on it. Every time Gracia made a move to get up, he just held up a hand and glared at her until she sat back down on the couch again. She sighed heavily each time, and rolled her eyes, but she tried to relax at his orders.

Maes was nothing if not efficient, though. It was less than ten minutes before he was ready to escort his two favorite ladies out into the rain-soaked streets. The three of them huddled together under his umbrella, and Gracia held Elicia's hands while the little girl experimented with stepping in puddles. She laughed each time the water splashed back on her. They walked to the bakery down the street, where Gracia had once worked, and Maes bought a pack of cookies for them to share on their walk back home.

“You're soaked!” Gracia accused, laughing as she kissed Maes on the threshold of their apartment. “How did you get so wet when you had an umbrella?”

“You're wet, too.”

“Because I was walking with Elicia.”

Maes kissed her back, fumbling with the front door lock as he did so. Gracia shifted the baby in her arms. “We'll dry off,” Maes promised, once he broke the kiss.

Gracia grinned, shook her head, and reached for the last cookie.

Maes took off Gracia's coat as she chewed, and then helped Elicia wriggle out of her coat as well. He hung them up in the closet while Gracia took their daughter down the hall to her nusery at the back of the apartment.

“I'm going to put Elicia down for her nap,” Gracia called. Maes, from the living room, began unfolding a newspaper.

“Okay!” he yelled back.

“Da-da-da-da-da,” Elicia babbled, happily shaking a rattle she'd picked up in her crib.

“Can you say 'mama'?” Gracia prompted. “Ma-ma.”

“Da-da-da,” Elicia said, looking her mother straight in the eye.

Gracia sighed, and picked her daughter up to plant a kiss on her forehead before settling her down in her crib. “Sleep well, baby girl,” she said softly.

“Da!” Elicia replied.


	2. Day 2: School (Maes Hughes's Mother)

“Fuck, Hughes,” a boy called Andrew Sears protested, as he leaned over Maes's desk to compare their test scores. “I thought Mrs. Martin said the whole class was a disappointment.”

Hughes just shrugged. When the very same Mrs. Martin pulled him aside as all the other teenaged students gathered their belongings and filed out of the room, Sears smirked at him, sure he was about to be punished for cheating. Once it was just him alone with the teacher, Hughes put on one of his very best smiles.

“I know what it looks like-” he began, but Mrs. Martin held up a hand to silence him before he'd even gotten started.

“Have you considered joining the military?” she asked him, giving him her full attention and making Hughes clear his throat nervously as he tried to figure out whether she was being serious or not. It seemed like she was being serious.

“My father may have mentioned it. Once or twice.”

“Scores like yours, you'd be almost guaranteed a place at the Academy.”

Hughes nodded, for lack of anything better to say. The _military?_

It was impossible to grow up in Central without running into the military; they walked around like they owned the place. Hughes wanted a boss with a better sense of humor.

He stood there with his arms over his chest, every inch the belligerent teenager. Mrs. Martin didn't seemed fooled. “I can set you up with one of the cadets,” she said. “He'll be your mentor for your first few months.”

She talked like the decision had already been made. For her, it had been. Maes scowled and was reminded, yet again, of his father. Well, going to the Academy would get him out of his house, at least. Was that enough of a fair trade for it to be worth putting on a uniform and picking up a gun? The military was more than the discipline his father thought he needed, or the opportunity Mrs. Martin dangled in front of him. It was both of those things, certainly, but the military _killed people._ Maes Hughes was only fifteen years old, but he figured that was plenty old enough to know he didn't want other people's _lives_ on his conscience, protecting Amestris or not. He could put his inexplicable talent with numbers to use in plenty of other ways. He could be a successful entrepeneur. Or an accountant.

“I'll think about it,” he told Mrs. Martin, with the disarming smile that said “I am not lying.” He had another class to get to. Surely his math teacher couldn't keep him here forever.

She nodded, and gestured toward the door. “I just want to see you living up to your potential, Mr. Hughes.”

Maes slowly nodded, and couldn't get out of the room fast enough.

Chemistry was a much safer class for him; he was barely passing, so there couldn't be any potential for Mr. Sisken to feel obligated to mold. Sears was his lab partner, and Maes told him first thing that Mrs. Martin had indeed told him off for cheating, just to prevent further questions.

Lunch brought a cheerfully rowdy table full of boys mostly focused on the evening's football game against their rivals from across town. “Hughes, are you gonna streak again?” somebody asked him.

“Or spraypaint something?” another voice chipped in.

Hughes just smiled and shrugged. “You never know.”  
  
“But you are coming to the game, right?”

“Of course I am, I'm in the marching band, you jackass.”

Hughes's lunchtime friends forgave his participation in this nerdy activity because of his entertainment potential in most other areas. He swiped a handful of fries from Forester and took a bite of his own sandwich.

By the time the bell rang to send him to Shop, he had _almost_ forgotten Mrs. Martin's proposal.

“How was school?” his mother asked as he dropped his backpack onto the dining room table and turned to her in the kitchen.

“Fine,” he said. He had no intention of mentioning the military to either of his parents. If his father thought he could ally with Maes's teachers, young Maes Hughes would never be able to squirm his way out of their influence.

His mother sighed heavily. “Graffiti in the boys' room?”

“Don't tell Dad,” Maes pleaded, immediately followed by “It wasn't me.” He knew that the order of that outburst probably did nothing to help his claims of innocence, but he looked at his mother imploringly and waited for her response. Maes's mother sighed and reached out to ruffle his hair. He shrank back, insisting that he was not a little kid, and she sighed and nodded.

“Are you hungry?” she asked him, as she began pulling out bread and cheese.  
  
“Are you going to tell Dad?”  
  
“Your father and I don't keep secrets, Maes.”

“He'll _kill_ me.”

His mother looked up, into Maes's green eyes, dark with worry. He wasn't quite afraid of his father, but to say the ex-military man was strict was probably slightly understating it, and that clashed with Maes's deep-seated need for freedom and his troublesome sense of humor. Maes's mother never liked the look on her son's face after his father had finished taking his belt to him after some misdeed or another. Maes always retreated after such punishment, hiding from both of them, often for several days. He had tried running away from home a few times before, though he always came back before she could get truly panicked.

“I won't tell him,” she said softly.

Maes smiled tentatively, and then he flung his arms around her. “Really? You're the best, Mom!” He kissed her, and his grin lit up the room.

She set the cheese sandwich and an apple in front of him. “If you say it wasn't you, I believe you.” This was true. Despite his often poor decisions, Maes was compulsively honest. He took credit for the things he did whether doing so was wise or not. He often got _himself_ into trouble, usually to protect his friends from being branded guilty by association.

“It really wasn't me,” Maes insisted, around a mouth full of sandwich. “I swear to god, it wasn't. But look at this!” He pulled a crumpled up piece of paper out of his bag and handed it to her. The 94 was written and circled on the top of the test in red pen. “You really understand all of this?” his mother asked, taking the paper from him and studying it with a frown on her face.  
  
“It's easy.”

“This I think I'll tell your father about.” She made to set it at her husband's place at the dinner table, but Maes shook his head, still begging with his eyes. “ _Why_?”

“Mrs. Martin says people as good at math as this have to join the military.” It was not _exactly_ what she'd said, but it was exactly how Maes's father would interpret it. His mother handed the test to Maes, and planted a kiss to the top of his forehead.  
  
“Then it'll be our little secret.” She pulled away before Maes could squirm away from her. “I'm so proud of you, son.”  
  
“I know, Mom,” Maes said with his mouth full. He swallowed his food before his mother could protest. “I love you.”


	3. Day 3: Grounded (Chris Mustang)

Roy sat on the bench outside the principal's office, listening as his aunt's loud voice barked at the man in charge of the school. His voice was harder to hear, but Roy knew from experience that he could be implacable when it came to children breaking the rules of his school. Roy knew his aunt had his back – she wouldn't be arguing with Mr. Hiller if she didn't – but he didn't think even she could talk him out of a suspension. Though it wasn't _fair_. No one asked for his side of the story, though. No one asked for Jennifer's either.

Madam Christmas suddenly stormed out of the office, and she quickly beckoned Roy to the door of the school. “Come on. We're leaving.”

He followed her silently, a funny feeling in the pit of his stomach. It wasn't guilt, exactly, but he couldn't stand disappointing her. He kept his thoughts to himself for the entire walk home.

“What were you thinking?” she asked him carefully, once they were back in the safety of the bar. Roy flashed her one of his best innocent smiles.

“Come on, Aunt Chris,” he pleaded. “You know I wouldn't go into the girl's bathroom if it wasn't the girl's idea.”

That actually seemed to give her pause. She brought her fingers up to the bridge of her nose and let out a heavy sigh. “Oh, Roy.”

“Nothing even happened!”

“You were _caught_ with your _hand_ down her _skirt_.”

Roy just shrugged, his face flushing slightly red. “She told me to,” he mumbled, yet again trying to make it obvious that this wasn't his _fault_.

It wasn't that he couldn't handle a suspension – a few days out of school actually sounded like a nice break, no matter that his aunt would certainly have him working the entire time, scrubbing down the entire bar from top to bottom with a toothbrush or whatever – but it was more of a problem for him that he couldn't even seem to get any of the adults to _listen_. The teachers and the principal at school were one thing, he expected that from them, but his aunt? She'd been teaching him for years that women were just as entitled to sexual pleasure as men and could perfectly well express what they wanted.

“You're twelve years old, Roy.”

What did _that_ have to do with anything? “It's not like we were having _sex_ , Aunt Chris!”

He already knew what a girl had between her legs, anyway. He'd known that since he was five. And he knew perfectly well that Jennifer had only invited him into the girls' room on a dare. Maybe she was _trying_ to get him into trouble. Manipulative b- No. He shook his head. If he even _thought_ that word, Aunt Chris would... well. He knew better.

“I'm sorry,” he muttered, because that seemed like the simplest way out of this. Chris sighed heavily once again.

“Sit down,” she ordered, so Roy perched himself onto a barstool and watched his aunt pace around behind the bar, pulling out one liquor bottle after another before finally settling on a whiskey that even Roy knew was expensive. She poured it into a tumbler and sipped at it quietly for several minutes while Roy looked on, eyes pleading.

“Are you mad at me?” he finally asked.

She gave him a glare that could kill, and Roy tried to hide his wince. But then she set down her drink and shook her head. “I'm not mad, Roy, I just... I thought you had more sense.” Still, why should she have thought that? He was a twelve-year-old boy, after all.

“I'm sorry,” Roy repeated.

“I know you are, Roy.” She took another long pull of whiskey, watching him with a level stare. “You're grounded, you know.”

“Yeah, I kinda figured.”

“And maybe your sisters can explain to you what a colossally stupid thing you just did, since it doesn't seem likely you'll listen to me.”

“Okay...”

“Listen to your _gut_ , Roy-boy. Did your gut tell you that following this Jessica-”

“Jennifer.”

“Whatever. Did your gut tell you that following this girl into the bathroom was a good idea?”

“No.” Roy sighed. “What if I knew it wasn't a good idea and I did it anyway?”

“Then you're no different than any other man.”

“Is that bad?”

Chris actually laughed at that. “No, it's not bad. It's not good. It's just _life,_ Roy. Dammit, you should've seen the shit your father got up to at your age.”

Ah, _that_ got Roy's attention. Chris so rarely talked about Xavier Mustang, and usually when she did, it was to remind Roy of all the things that he'd idolized about his father: his military career and his medals of valor and the do-gooder's cape around his shoulders. “Really?” Roy asked. He slid off the barstool and picked up his aunt's now-empty glass, taking it over to the sink to wash it.

“Amy Walker could certainly tell you a few stories.”

“Who's that?”

“Girl who lived down the street. Your father chased her for years. I thought they'd eventually get married, to be honest. But she was careful about not letting him knock her up, I suppose.”

“You said he loved my mother.”

“He did, Roy-boy. But that was long after his teenage years, remember. Oh, but if there was anyone who could lure him into a school bathroom, it would've been Amy.”

Roy smiled, and then he climbed up onto the barstool next to his aunt. “Thanks, Aunt Chris.”

She reached over and ruffled his hair. “You're welcome. You're still grounded.”

“Yeah, I know. But I think... I think that that's okay.”


	4. Day 4: Homework (Riza Hawkeye's Mother)

“Not like that, Riza. Here. You need to make a capital letter R. Like this.”

Riza settled back on her heels as her mother drew careful lines in her notebook, first an up and down line, then a curve around and a slanty line coming down from that. Riza tried to carefully copy the shape, her fist wrapped tight around her pencil as she drew. It was a wobbly figure that emerged, but Mama clapped her hands and grinned at Riza before ruffling her hair. “Yes, that's exactly right!”

Riza beamed. She bent down to write the rest of her name the way she'd learned in school. She put the little dot on top of the letter i last. “Look, Mama, I did it.”

“You're so smart, my darling.” She shifted herself so that Riza could curl up at her side. “Do you like school?” she asked.

“It's okay, I guess,” Riza said. “I like it better staying at home with you.”

Riza's mother smiled. “I miss you when you're gone.”

“I bet you get really lonely.”

“Sometimes I do.”

Riza reached for the rag doll that was never far away from her, and pressed it into her mother's hands. “Now you won't be lonely anymore,” she insisted.

Mama smiled, wide and bright, and she kissed Riza's cheek.

“Thank you,” she said softly into her ear. “I'll take very good care of her.” Mama set the doll on the chaise behind them, and took another look at Riza's notebook. Her daughter had moved on to practicing writing the letters of the alphabet. She struggled to form some of them correctly, and some of them were backwards, but Riza was so stubbornly determined to finish the assignment that she was reluctant to interrupt the little girl. Time passed quietly as Riza continued her homework. Her mother looked up at the grandfather clock, trying to work out how much time she would need to get dinner on the table. Not that Berthold came to the table at any particularly predictable time. Half the time, when Riza ran to retreive him, he said he was too busy to eat.

“Look, Mama, I'm finished.” Riza held up her notebook so that her mother could see.

“I'm so proud of you!” she exclaimed. “You've gotten so big.”

Mama closed the notebook and set it on the chaise next to the doll. Riza eagerly ran toward the bookshelf in the corner of the room. “Time to read!” she squealed. Mama nodded and sat down in the stuffed armchair next to the bookshelf. Riza liked to do her homework laying down on the sitting room floor, but reading was different. The two of them had curled up in this chair to share stories since Riza was old enough to sit up on her own.

“Which book did you pick for us this time?”

Riza slammed it into her lap, a book of translated Xingese folktales. She liked to hear of the adventures of the strange animals, and seemed satisfied by the morals that wrapped up each story, even if her mother privately noticed that many of those morals competed with the priorities of Amestrian culture. Still, Riza's school encouraged parents to read to their children each night, and the little girl's bedtime stories had shifted to this: looking through a book after she'd finished the rest of her homework, before it was time to make dinner.

Riza tucked herself up against her mother's body, and put her hand on the black-and-white illustration taking up the whole right-side page of the book. “This is the story about the snake and the tiger,” she announced.

“That's right,” Mama said. She cleared her throat softly. “Once upon a time...”

“No, let me do it! Once upon a time, the snake and the tiger lived in the deep forests, where people were too scared to go...”

Riza told the tale she had memorized, using the pictures in the book to guide her along the way. Mama rested her chin on her little girl's head and wrapped her arm around her. She couldn't believe how grownup her daughter was getting. She doubted Berthold would believe her if she told him that Riza was reading and writing. She sometimes wondered if he even noticed that she disappeared to school for several hours each day. He spent so much time in his study.

“That was a wonderful story,” she told Riza, once the little girl had finished and was looking up at her expectantly. “Why don't you put the book away and come and help me in the kitchen?”

As expected, Riza was eager to follow her suggestion. She loved working in the kitchen, climbing up on the step-stool to reach the counters. Mama had just recently started trusting her with a knife, which she used to carefully chop vegetables to include in soups and stews. Mama had just baked fresh bread the day before, and the loaf was waiting for them all to share. Riza's stomach grumbled a little as she worked, but Mama snuck her a cookie to tide her over until dinner time. She chewed on the snack while watching her mother peeling a few potatoes. When she swallowed the last bite, Mama pushed them over toward her.

“Can you chop these for me, baby?” She pulled Riza's hair behind her shoulders, quickly pulling it up into a ponytail so that it wouldn't get in the way. Riza smiled and nodded her agreement. Her mother turned back to the kitchen cabinets as Riza started cutting, her heart full of gratitude and love for her cheerfully and obedient daughter. Oh, she had her father's stubbornness, but she very rarely disobeyed. It made it so much easier to teach her the things she would need to know. Reports from the teachers at school sent similar messages: 'a pleasure to have in class' et cetera.

A plate slipped from Mama's grasp and crashed to the floor. In her shock, Riza nearly cut herself with the knife in her hand. “Mama!” Her mother was holding tight to the counter, coughing hard enough to shake her entire body. Her face flushed red as she struggled to draw in a deep enough breath. Riza wrapped her arms tight around her mother's knees and buried her face into her leg. After a moment, the coughing fit subsided, and Riza's mother ruffled her daughter's hair. She dropped to her knees so that she could look her daughter in the eye. Riza's brows were furrowed and there was no mistaking the worried look on her face. “Are you okay?” she asked dubiously.

Mama smiled. To Riza, she looked a little sad even though she was smiling, but her voice was cheerful enough when she said “I'm perfectly fine, honey. There's nothing for you to worry about.”


	5. Day 5: Comfort (Trisha Elric)

Thump. Thump. Thump. The ball hit the wall of the house every few seconds like clockwork. Trisha sighed, and looked out the window to see Ed throwing the ball and catching it on the rebound. She winced every time it came near the house, but as long as it didn't come crashing through a window she supposed she couldn't forbid the activity. Where was Al? It was rare that her two boys weren't joined at the hip. That curiosity more than anything led her to dry her hands in the towel sitting next to the sink and walk out through the back door toward the patch of scraggly grass where her oldest son played. The heat of summer blazed down on her as soon as she stepped through the door.

The creak of the screen door behind her alerted Ed, who caught his ball and then turned toward her. His face was sullen, and his eyes flashed with anger. Oh yes, there was definitely something wrong. Trisha sat down on the back steps and waited, watching to see if Ed would throw his ball again. He didn't. He dropped it and watched it roll away through the dirt.

Trisha held her arms open, inviting Ed into a hug. Al would've run right into her arms and tried to crush her with his reciprocating hug. But Ed didn't like to be touched. Instead, he took a couple of small steps closer to her, and looked up at her from behind blond hair that was growing too long. Trisha brushed the hair out of his eyes and met his serious gaze with her own.

“What's wrong?” she asked him. When he didn't answer, she continued prompting. “Does it have something to do with your brother?”

“No.”

“Where is Al?”

“I dunno. He's playin' with Winry and Den.”

“And you didn't want to go?”

Ed shook his head. He was holding his entire body tense, and Trisha knew that he would likely explode within a few minutes.

“You can talk to me,” she said. “I'll listen. It's my job as your mom.”

“I want Daddy.”

The simple statement squeezed around her heart. When the boys were younger, just after Hohenheim had left, she had promised the children that he'd be back soon. She had stopped making such promises.

“I miss him too,” she said quietly.

“I hate him!” Ed yelled. With the ball no longer in his hand to absorb his restless energy, he settled for clenching his hands into tight fists. “I hate him so much!”

Trisha squeezed her eyes shut and wracked her brain trying to figure out if there were something special that might have brought this on. Perhaps it was simply that it was an average summer day, just like the one on which Hohenheim had packed up his suitcase and walked out the door. She sighed. Ed began pummeling his little fists against her legs, until she cradled the back of his head with her hand, coaxing him to stop. There was so much anger contained in such a tiny body. It took Trisha's breath away.

“When I'm upset,” she said. “I like to go down to the river. Would you like to go with me?”

Edward tilted his head back and stared at her, wide-eyed. But then he nodded.

Trisha reached out to take his hand, and his small fingers curled up inside her own.

Once they got to the river, Trisha sat on the bank with her bare feet in the water. Ed joined her, and the two of them stared out at the water breaking white across the rocks upriver. The rush of the water was loud enough that Trisha had to raise her voice when she said “You hate your father for leaving, Edward.”

It wasn't a question, but the little boy nodded anyway. His brow was furrowed with intense emotion. “You promised he'd come back!” he demanded.

“I know I did,” Trisha said quietly.

“So you lied!”

“I didn't mean to, Ed.” He glared at her, clearly not ready to accept any form of apology she might try to give. “Are you mad at me as well?”

“No,” Ed said stubbornly.

Trisha smiled and reached out to put her hand over top of his. She half expected him to pull away, but he allowed the touch, and that made it easier for Trisha to breathe. It began to loosen the knot inside her chest. “I'm glad.”

He scooted a little closer to her. “Mom,” he said quietly. “Why did Daddy leave?”

The question was heartbreaking. Ed's voice was a high-pitched keen. He was hurting.

“He still loves you, and your brother. I need you to know that.”

“Yeah, but why did he leave?”

“I don't know, Ed, he didn't tell me.”

Ed found a stick and began swirling it around in the river. He threw rocks into the water and watched the splash and the ripples afterward. He was obviously thinking deep thoughts, and, just as obviously, not in the mood to share them with his mother. But every minute or so he would turn his head and find her, just to make sure that she was still there.

“We should go home,” Ed said, after they had been sitting on the riverbank for nearly an hour. “I want to look for Al.”

Trisha nodded. She was glad Ed seemed to have calmed down. He was no longer a ball of rage trying to remain contained inside a child's body, anyway. Trisha picked herself up off the ground and let Ed run ahead of her, let him lead the way back to the house.

He slammed the kitchen door behind him. Trisha opened it carefully, watching as he ran through the house, calling for his brother. “Al's not here,” he announced a minute later, returning to the kitchen.

“Go and find him,” she suggested. “I'm sure Winry would like to see you.” Ed gave a slight shake of his head. “Well, alright then. Come and help me here.”

“Okay.”

Trisha pulled down a large pot and several potatoes, taking a knife and peeling the first one from the pile. She was hoping a big plate of mashed potatoes would help Ed's mood. “Comfort food,” Pinako called it.

Ed sat on a stool, swinging his legs back and forth, watching her. Maybe this was all he needed. An afternoon together, just him and her. Trisha couldn't remember the last time they'd had anything like that.

“Here,” she said, handing Ed a bowl of fruit. He took it in two hands. “I love you,” she told him, as he carried the bowl over to the table. “I love you more than anyone else in the world ever could.”

He nodded, and set the bowl down with a thunk. “I know, Mom.” His smile was not exactly an 'I love you' or a 'thank you', but it contained both of those sentiments and more.

Trisha smiled back.


	6. Day 6: Graduation (Alex Armstrong's Mother)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm aware that passing the State Alchemist Exam is not exactly a graduation, but I think it's quite close, and that is where the story wanted to go. Please forgive me.

Alex hung his military jacket over the back of the chair, and rested his gauntled hands on either side of it. He knew he should have felt happy, but mostly he just felt tired. It had been a long few weeks going through the stages of the State Alchemist Exam, a long few years before that, studying, experimenting, trying and failing and trying again. Now, he'd gotten what he wanted. Except he wasn't so certain this was what he wanted at all. Oh, he wanted to be an alchemist, sure. But the military uniform he was wearing chafed. His father wanted that life. His uncles were proud to fight for Amestris. Alex knew the military wasn't for him. But what else could he do?

His hand slipped down to the pocketwatch at his hip, and he ran his hand over the raised edges of the Amestrian dragon on the cover. This was the symbol of what he was now. This was _proof_ of everything he had accomplished, everything he'd earned. So why did it feel so heavy in his hand?

He took a deep breath, and turned toward the door. “Mother,” he rumbled. Mrs. Armstrong smiled, looking up at her son, and pulled the dining room door quietly shut behind her.

“Come, let me look at you.” She took a few steps closer to him and began dusting invisible dirt from his shoulders. She moved to scrub his cheek with her thumb, but Alex balked.

“Mother, please.”

She sighed, but acknowledged his need for space. Alex put his hand atop the chair again, giving himself something to hold on to. His mother pulled out a chair at the table next to him, and sat down.

It was far from the first time they'd sat here in this room like this, Alex pacing nervously while his mother tried to calm him.

“I thought you'd be happy,” she said simply.

“I am happy.”

“But...” He shook his head. How was he supposed to explain his anxieties? He wasn't even sure he could put them into words. “Alex, I'm your mother. You can always tell me anything.”

“I've been trying to become a State Alchemist for ten years, Mother. But now that I actually am one...” He nodded toward the jacket hanging from the chair. “I want to be an _alchemist_. Not a soldier.”

Just saying the words out loud sent a flash of guilt through him, reddening his cheeks a little. In Amestris, in his family especially, any hesitation to swear loyalty to the military meant cowardice, a capital offense. Alex had just sworn loyalty to the military, and his loyalty wasn't easily shaken. But that hesitation was still there.

“Are you frightened?” Mother asked.

“Not really,” Alex said softly. “Not like you think. I'm not afraid of dying or anything like that.”

Mother nodded. He didn't have to _tell_ her. She'd been watching Alex grow up since he was growing inside her womb. Her baby boy wouldn't hurt a fly. That's what had him so unsettled.

“Alchemists don't fight, though, darling. It's not like you'll be carrying a gun into battle.”

Alex nodded. He knew that. And the military had been a dominant force in his life ever since he was old enough to understand his father's role in it. So really, nothing much had changed.

He flashed his mother what he hoped was a reassuring smile. “I just want to make the family proud,” he said. His mother nodded. She reached out to gather him up in a hug, and this time he let her. She hadn't been born into the Armstrong family. She'd married into it, for the political gain of her father more than any other reason. But still, she loved her husband. And she loved her children most of all. And she had a soft spot for Alex, her only boy. His was such a gentle soul.

“I am so proud of you, Alex,” she told him, with tears welling up in your eyes. “You are everything I could have hoped for in a son.”

Alex pulled back. He looked at her with wide eyes and a shocked expression. She knew that no one had ever given him anything like such open approval in his life. If her husband had heard it, he would have barked at her and told her not to coddle the boy. But Alex was a grown man now, and this was a special day. She did not regret her words.

“Thank you,” Alex whispered, at a loss for anything else to say. His mother squeezed his hand gently.

“Now, show me some of this alchemy,” she said. She stood straight-backed and clear-eyed, watching her son with obvious pride.

Alex grinned. He'd been showing off his alchemy to his mother – the only one who cared, once Olivier had left – for years. But now, for the first time, she'd be watching a _State Alchemist's_ alchemy. He walked over to the potted plant in the corner of the room and let a handful of the sandy dirt inside fall through his fingers. The gauntlets on his hands had his circle etched into them, making it easy to create the flow needing to craft an alchemic reaction. The sand becomes glass, and the glass he shapes into a dragon, the fierce protector of all Amestris, with a mane of fire and sharp claws and intelligent eyes. It's delicate work, something most people don't assume he's capable of. But little tests like this one filled up the majority of his years of study.

He lets a breath out when she finishes, then he scoops the dragon into his hand and deposits it into his mother's open palm. “It's beautiful,” she whispers.

It's a waste of his talent, according to his military superiors, but Alex pushes that thought deep down and kisses his mother on the cheek. “It's just for you, Mother.”


	7. Day 7: Change (Pinako Rockbell)

“You better go upstairs and get yourself some sleep.” Winry groaned, her head cradled in her elbow on the kitchen table. Her eyes were closed. “What, you need me to carry you?”

The young girl picked her head up just enough to look at her grandmother. “I can't sleep,” she demanded, though her words were slurred with exhaustion. “Ed needs...”

“ _Ed_ is sleeping. In the room right next to mine. If he wakes up, I'll hear 'im.”

Pinako set down her pipe in the ashtray and reached out to rest her hand on Winry's upper arm. Her granddaughter's eyes were red, and she kept blinking them, and moving her head slightly as if having trouble focusing her vision.

“I can't sleep,” Winry repeated.

The surgery to install Ed's automail port had been long and grueling, and the sounds of his hoarse screams still echoed in her ears.

“I already told you-”

But Winry was already shaking her head. “That's not what I mean. I mean I tried, and I can't.”

Pinako let out a heavy sigh. She'd been so absorbed in the boys' trauma (and where is Al? If he isn't here, he's certainly looking after Ed. She lets out a long exhale) that she'd failed to account for Winry's needs in all of this. Almost overnight, she'd shifted from being an eleven-year-old girl to being a trauma surgeon. Yes, she'd been helping with automail since she'd stopped going to school the day they got the message about her parents' deaths in Ishval. But the mechanics of it were one thing. Pinako had let her help out the patients with their recovery and therapy, but the surgeries themselves, the bottomless wells of human agony, she'd tried to keep her still very young granddaughter sheltered from. But there was no way Pinako could've kept her away from Ed even if she wanted to, and the truth was, she'd needed the help in the operation room.

Winry couldn't close her eyes without thinking of the sharp scent of hospital-strength disinfectant mixing with the cloying iron tang of blood. She could taste it at the back of her throat, almost making her gag.

Pinako pushed her mug of tea closer to Winry, but the girl shook her head.

“It'll settle your stomach,” her grandmother said. “Might help you sleep.” But Winry still didn't want to risk it. Pinako shrugged, and took a sip of her own. The tea was still very hot, with curlicues of steam rising up from the liquid. The cup nearly burned her hand. She set it down gently on the table, away from Winry.

Then she stood up, walked around behind the chair where her granddaughter sat, and began massaging the tension out of the young girl's shoulders. Her muscles were stiff. Pinako tried to remember the last time Winry had been out to run, or play. Only days, but it felt like so much longer.

“Why don't you go check on Al?” Pinako said, though Winry could barely hold her eyes open. “He doesn't sleep, either. You two might be able to talk.”

Winry slowly nodded, rubbing at her eyes and slowly standing. Pinako pulled her hand away from the child's shoulder.

After she'd finished her tea, she followed the young girl up the stairs to her own bedroom, sitting perched on the edge of the bed. She wouldn't sleep either, but she didn't need to sleep like an adolescent did. She didn't need to change her whole sleep cycle around in a matter of days. Pinako was used to catching her rest in short naps whenever she could spare the time. Winry would stay awake, pushing through the exhaustion, until her body literally couldn't do it anymore. When she crashed, she would crash hard. Sarah had been like that too, pulling all-nighters all through medical school, acting like she wasn't tired. Pinako had known better, of course. It's why she volunteered to watch little Winry when the baby wouldn't sleep through the night. Her daughter and granddaughter needed their sleep. Pinako could watch over them.

She got up from the bed and padded into the hallway. The door to Ed's room was half-open. Pinako peered inside, to see Ed on the bed, eyes closed, sheet pulled over his legs and naked from the waist up. An IV drip drained slowly into his arm, one drop at a time. At the foot on the bed, the large suit of armor that contained her other adopted son sat with legs splayed out and pink eyes focused on Winry. She sat across from Al, legs pulled up to her chest and head resting on her knees. The two of them conversed quietly, obviously worried.

But Winry glanced up and saw Pinako in the doorway, and she gave her a tired smile.

Pinako sighed. So much had changed so quickly. It wasn't that she hadn't been taking care of Ed and Al for years, ever since Trisha had died. But now, she knew, they were hers in an entirely new way. Ed would take years to recover from that day's surgery, so he and Al, the handicapped boy and the suit of armor, would live with them full time and be part of their family.

She looked back at Winry, who seemed to be comforted by Al's steady presence.

Yes, this was a lot of change to get used to, and the accident (if that's what they were calling it) had been horrible beyond words. But the change itself might not be so very bad.  
  
"Good night," she whispered to the children.   
  
"Good night, Granny," Al said cheerfully. 


End file.
